Tuesday, March 16, 2010

It Only Takes a Moment

How quickly the direction of life changes. One minute you are flying along, doing laundry and dishes, the next you are running to doctors and practices. We all know that in an instant, lives change. The musical, "Hello Dolly", has a scene where a young man is talking about how long it takes to fall in love. He says that an instant is not it, and a minute is too long. An older lady looks at him and says, "A moment." Cornelius brightens and says "Yes, a moment." That is how long it has taken for each of my children's lives to change.

Most of you know that Allie is having gall bladder surgery next Tuesday. So we are doing all we can to prepare her for this. After supper last night, she came out of her room sniffling. I looked at Mike and got up to see what was going on. Last night she was feeling scared and down. She wouldn't even hang out with her BFF. I sat on her bed and asked her what she was feeling. She told me she didn't know. She didn't know why she was crying. I told her that it was okay for her to cry. I told her I expected her to run the gamut of emotions for the next 7 days. She can cry, be angry, yell, and act goofy. It is all perfectly natural for these things to run through her. I let her cry until she was done. I suggested we go to my room and watch a movie. After a while, she decided that is a good idea. So she picked, of all things Finding Nemo.

I thought several things when she picked this movie. First, it was one of her childhood favorites and she should pick something light and fun to watch. Next, as we started watching it, this movie shows of how lives change in a moment, how we go through scary things, and how we fight to get back. All of these are wonderful qualities in a movie. We laughed at the goofy fish, Dorey, who couldn't remember anything, but could talk to whales, could read, and was so optimistic about life. She was laughing by the middle of the story.

Timm, also has had a "moment" to change his path. He has been talking about doing track for the past month or so. But an ankle injury has blocked that, and he just hasn't seemed really into it. During my last hour or work, Mike text me and told me that he didn't think that Timm wanted to do track and was upset that he seemed to be making excuses. When I got home, Timm started telling me about how in band, the director asked the boys of the band if any of them would be interested doing a bit for the high school musical. He said if he did this he couldn't do track. I looked him in the eyes and asked him which was more important to him. He looked at his dad and said, "Dad, there's your answer." He wants to act and do plays and band. We have no problem with this. In fact, I am secretly thrilled. I love going to plays and band concerts, so this is going to be fun for me. The musical is The Music Man. Timm will be in the little boy band that we see at the end.

The Psalmist tells us in chapter 30, verse 5,

For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime;
weeping may remain for a night,
but rejoicing comes in the morning.

Remember the moments of your life. Remember the life changes the brought you to where you are now. That brought you to Christ. Moments are not always wonderful things, but usually they are life changing.